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1899: A Very Good Year for Books

According to Google Books, it’s the year Raymond Chandler‘s Killer in the Rain was published, along with Stephen King‘s Christine and a landmark biography of Bob Dylan — not to mention the Italian edition of Freakonomics and Portuguese edition Super Crunchers. These are mistakes, obviously, and they point to even more troubling errors that bedevil Google’s digital library project, as Geoffrey Nunbergexplains. Update | 4:51 p.m. See a response from Google’s metadata team here. [%comments]

skan

Peter

Their taste? I mean, I like books as much as the next guy. But I don't go licking my bookshelves.

But seriously, you can have both digital and hard copies of books, one doesn't necessarily exclude the other.

rishi

September 10, 2009 @ 9:28pm

I agree with Andrew (Comment 5). This can be easily solved by allowing many people to edit the meta data and correct errors.

This is what Google did with the Maps site and got very effective, searchable, maps for countries in Asia.

Mary T. Finn

September 11, 2009 @ 12:20pm

And people believe wholeheartedly whatever they see on the internet. It reminds me of George Orwell's 1984 where corps of history correctors work over-time altering all the books or the famous Candid Camera stunt where they put up a sign on an interstate highway announcing that the state was closed.